Alec Niedenthal is the 17-year-old Alabama novelist who became suddenly prominent thanks to a cheeky letter in the Times Book Review last month. The missive promised a new wave of fiction from a "MySpace-addled" generation, called out well-known older authors and included many large words. This attracted interest from publishers HarperCollins and Grove/Atlantic and an inquiry from Jonathan Franzen's literary agent. But of this group, only one party, HarperCollins, deigned to meet with Niedenthal on his trip to New York this past weekend, and the ambitious young writer left town with a tote bag rather than any deal. He'll presumably have a more fruitful tour after finishing his own edition of the collective "manuscript" alluded to in his Times letter. Until then, the hordes of older novelists struggling to get published have no reason to gouge their eyes out with a fork. After the jump, Niedenthal recalls for the Observer his HarperCollins meeting.

In a new book, The Pirate's Dilemma, author Matt Mason holds up geek heroes like Linus Torvalds and Jimmy Wales as icons of "punk capitalism." Given Wales's abject failure to profit from Wikipedia or his follow-on venture, Wikia, I'd say Mason has that label half-right.

High Fidelity author Nick Hornby remains unimpressed with the Amazon Kindle and Border's iLiad electronic book-reader in Britain, and he'll tell you why after the jump. (Also, did we know that he's just quit his "Stuff I've Been Reading column in literary mag The Believer after 5 years?)

Christopher Ciccone is Madonna's brother and the author of America's most important new book, his "extremely graphic and devastating," tell-all about his sister's life. But Ciccone seems to be getting a woefully scant amount of press from the usual celebrity-slobbering suspects. Perhaps that's because Madonna's rep Liz Rosenberg-one of America's foremost lying flacks!-is putting the hammer down on any outlet that wants to keep covering the old blond "singer."

Author and recent Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing is famously cranky and outspoken. She says what she wants! (She doesn't give a damn about the Nobel or any other prize. See?) She's 88 and, as Time explains in their interview with her, she "refuses to play the role of Britain's elder literary stateswoman." Example: "I hear girls saying, 'Oh I'm not going to bring a child into this wicked world,' which means they are going to be pregnant next week."

Times editors can't stop lavishing praise on books linked to their corporate overlords — and one corporate overlord can't seem to keep her family members from enjoying the fruits of this self-dealing. Times board member Lynn Dolnick yet again has an immediate family member whose book is featured in her newspaper, and yet again there is no disclosure of the connection to the board or to publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who is Dolnick's cousin. And this time, the newspaper really went to town. A book by Dolnick's husband Edward about Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren got an early review ("engaging"), an "editor's choice" recommendation, a special plug on page A4, and a friendly write up on the Paper Cuts blog ("delightful book"). And the Times is not likely to be making any apologies for the situation, judging from its handling of Lynn Dolnick's last nepotism controversy.

The high bid for the Harvard-free, FSU Remix edition of Keith Gessen's All the Sad Young Literary Men currently stands at $560. Remember, all proceeds go to the Homeless Coalition. That's not even enough to send two homeless people to dinner at Per Se, so don't hold back! [The full story]

Brooke Parkhurst—self-described "Belle in the Big Apple," former Fox News assistant, Conde Nast blogger, and the blonde next to Julia Allison in our little pin-up shoot—has a chick-lit novel coming out from Scribner in September. Also titled Belle in the Big Apple, we hear that "apparently it had to be padded with 'recipes'—27 of them." That might be a bit unfair, since she's been writing about food for a while now. (Also, the book is subtitled "A Novel With Recipes.") But wait! This blurb sounds fairly autobiographical:

Once in a rare while, an item comes along that embodies the entire cultural zeitgeist of a particular time and place. Ladies and gentlemen of the creative underclass, we have just such an item in our hands today. And it's up for sale to YOU, the public! The players in this strange saga: Harvard-educated literary it-boy and haughty heartbreaker Keith Gessen; Gawker, sworn enemy of literary culture and pimp of kittens; and a copy of Gessen's poorly reviewed but terribly important book, All The Sad Young Literary Men, with a very special twist. Here's the entire story of how this item came to be, and how you can-and must-buy it, in order to win the culture war and house the homeless:

Whoever tries to tell you that "ummm, the market is a little crowded?" for your semi-obscure narrative nonfiction topic is lying! Galleycat notices the trend—sparked by NYT reporter Jennifer 8. Lee's book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles—of books published by women about eating Chinese food in China. There are three out this year—and one next January.

Fox bossman Roger Ailes is the best teacher any media attack flack could have. He's been screwing with the media for decades. Ailes is the man who perfected the art of hammering the media with charges of bias in order to deflect negative coverage from oneself. Kerwin Swint's new biography of him, Dark Genius, has plenty of examples from throughout his entire career. And you have to hand it to Ailes: his clients-all the way up to the President-got the best media haranguing tactics money can buy:

The first review that the New York Times wrote of fabricating memoirist James Frey's new novel, Bright Shiny Morning, was gushy to the point that it was written in the style of his novel. (It ran in the Arts section and was written by Janet Maslin.) But the NYT's Book Review takes it on this week—this time, the results are the literary equivalent of dropping a piano on an author's head. "Stupefying" and "Wikipedian" are some of the kinder words issued. At one point, it is actually suggested that maybe Frey is being bad on purpose.

We will begin by thanking Emily Gould-former Gawker editor, recent NYT Magazine cover story, and recently-sold book-writer-for providing us with content on a slow news day before a holiday weekend. She's chosen the perfect time to publish a long screed on her blog, titled "How Your Emily Gould Gossip Sausage Gets Made." Whoa! Everyone gets called out. We're all crazy from the heat this week!

A deliciously bitter ex-NYT reporter named John Darnton, who worked at the paper for more than 30 years, has a book coming out called Black and White and Dead All Over, which is murder mystery set at a thinly veiled version of the Times. The terribly-titled (but maybe well-written!) volume features a bunch of obvious allusions to real Times people, including a standards editor who gets murdered (take that, standards). Droopy-faced News Corp. overlord Rupert Murdoch figures prominently as an ominous character named "Lester Moloch." But this isn't the first time Murdoch has been flogged in fictional works. Oh no!

Women have long complained that the aging process is unfair to them whereas even the homeliest boy can expect to have the adjective "distinguished" applied to his appearance later in life. The feminine compensation for this trick of cruel nature is that men may get better looking as they get older, but they also get maudlin, verbose, and cranky. Claire Armistead considers the literary genre of the mid-life crisis in the Guardian and concludes "it does seem to be an exclusively male genre. Perhaps this is because 42-year-old women tend to be too busy grappling with ageing parents or troubled teenagers to indulge in thoughts of their own mortality. Or perhaps there's an emerging female equivalent - the memoir mourning the loss of fertility, like Hilary Mantel's haunting Giving Up the Ghost."

A book blogger bought a sackful of old books from a lady at Goodwill whose husband had recently died. Upon taking them home and opening them up, however... uh-oh! Turns out many of the books had been hollowed out and turned into stash-boxes for a collection of homemade porn. (Un-blurred pic after the jump.)

New Jersey lit agent Barbara Bauer is mad about being repeatedly called a scam agent on "the blogs"-so she's suing 19 websites and bloggers, including Wikipedia and YouTube bloggers! Believe it or not, there are dishonest and fraudulent literary agents out there in the media jungle. Only they're barely "real" agents and are easy to spot: a scam agent always want money from you up front, or charges a "reading fee." (Real agents work on commission-if they sell your book to a publisher they get 15%; otherwise they eat it.)

The former Gawker editor, NYT Magazine covergirl, and admitted oversharer has sold her memoir, And the Heart Says... Whatever (organized by her tattoos!), for something in the "low six figures." Publishers Weekly reports it'll "weave a picture of what it's like to be a young person in New York City in the early 2000s through a series of 'honest, searching and wry' recollections." Galleycat thinks the figure was something around $350,000-a very high price, yet much more realistic than the earlier-rumored $1 mil. Bought by Free Press in a pre-empt, it'll be out around 2010. (There will be new Gawker editors to cover the inevitable leaked excerpts by that time.)

Hey, what's the new Robert Crais novel, Chasing Darkness, about? According to a full-page ad in yesterday's New York Times, it concerns a man linked to a "series of grizzly deaths." No, grizzly bears aren't being murdered left and right—we think they meant "grisly deaths." (Click to see.)

Publishing insiders are all a-twitter about Lynne Spears's memoir about her troubled pop-star daughter Britney. CEO Michael Hyatt, of Christian publisher Thomas Nelson, microblogs: "I'm reading through the second draft of the Lynne Spears manuscript tonight. I am hoping to be able to approve it tomorrow. It's totally compelling." A few minutes later: " I can't put it down—and I'm not even the market!" One hour later: "Wow. People are going to be surprised. The media have it so wrong." Teach us, Lynne. [Michael Hyatt's Twitter]